Collision
by BlackRoseLove
Summary: Cassie has lived in carehomes since she was three. She's resigned herself to a life of street gangs and crime, but when a certain mysterious boy arrives at her school, will this change? Two worlds colliding... for good or for worse?
1. Life's Life

**Collision**

**OK I LOVE Justin Bieber xxx so I decided to write a fanfic about it **** its probably rubbish, but reviews are welcome, and emails from other Bieber Fevers xx **

**Background info: Cassie lives in a care home in London, Britain, and lost her single mother to cancer when she was three. She's always been lonely at school, because she lives in care, until a certain Canadian boy is sent for 'character building' at her secondary school. **

Luck. That's all life is. Pot-luck. Some people have it easy- nice home, nice family, good life. They can afford clothes in Abercrombie, and Hollister, and Jack Wills and have massive parties, and everything else they take for granted. They have nice houses, big bedrooms, and sweet parents who spoil them. Then there were seven thousand.

Seven thousand children living under Council Care in the UK alone. These are the children who came out with no numbers on the life lottery. They live in crappy care homes, with others in exactly the same situation as you, and you still end up beating the crap out of each other.

I should know. I have a bruise on my forehead from where Ellen whacked me on Sunday. She has a split lip. That was my hairbrush. Not me.

Hey, it's not the first fighting injury I've ever gotten. I got thrown out of the other care home I was in when I was seven for getting into fights all the time. Some girl broke my wrist, and she only got grounded, because she was seventeen and about to get her own flat. Lucky. I would give anything to live on my own, away from everything...

"Cassie!" Whoa. Miss Goodier, my geography and form, and P.S.H.C.E teacher has been on the _warpath _this month. I blame it on stress. Serious stress. Or PMT. "Since you seem to know so much about the structure of frontal rainfall to _daydream_ in my class, maybe you can explain to the rest of us how it works."

Jeez. What is it with teachers and the post-Easter holidays? Are they as stressed as us, knowing they won't get another holiday for seven weeks? Ugh. Seven weeks without a break. They really are trying to do us in.

A/N: I know this is far too short, but I'm going to post it up anyway, so I can see what people think of it


	2. Arrests

I hated the way lessons dragged on forever. The last lesson always seemed to stretch out into infinity. And yet, when the bell finally rang, I didn't feel relieved. It was raining, and I was walking home. I didn't even want to go home. It wasn't my home. 57a Elm Block was my home, even though I could barely remember it now. I could remember Bethnal Community Hospital much better. I could remember sitting beside my mum, in the final hours of her life. I remembered stroking along the deep scars along her arm, old ones from self harm as a teenager, and new ones from the drip she was constantly attached to. I remembered tying her pink scarf over her head, while she brushed my hair. I remembered her telling me to be good. I remembered her telling me that she loved me very much. I remember the heart monitor finally letting out one long uninterrupted bleep. I remembered being carried away by the lady in the black suit. I don't remember much else.

Typical London buses. You wait an hour for one, and three come along all at once. It looked like I was to be particularly unlucky that day. I'd probably missed the seventeen, meaning I'd have to take the thirty four, and I'd have to walk ten minutes more to get home. I'd even managed to forget my umbrella. A lovely start to a lovely evening.

As it turned out, I was right about having missed the seventeen. I'd also managed to miss the thirty-four, which was supposed to be the school bus, so I ended up taking the forty-nine, sending me halfway to the Tube station. Pointless? I think so. It meant I had to walk twenty-five minutes further on to get to the Zoo, our pet name for the Halfway House, where half of the children in care in Bethnal Green lived. Everyone headed to the park after school, which I guessed I would go too. It took a little longer than normal, because I had to change out of my uniform, and into jeans and sort out the untameable mess my hair had become.

Bethnal Green Playground wasn't so much a playground, as a burned out wreck. There were a couple of swings, a slide, and a couple of benches, but apart from that, there was nothing left. But after school, four hundred odd kids, from around this area came to see friends, and for the hardcore ones, drink, smoke, and even have the odd joint. I always avoided the drugs. I just came to see my friends.

Lily, Emma, Abby and Lola were perched on the railings when I arrived. They waved me over, and pulled me in close.

"What's up?" I asked. Lily grinned.

"Don't tell everyone, but you know that girl Aaliyah in Year Eleven? The one who is going out with Tony, the dude who got nicked last year for drug-busting?" Oh, typical Lily. Gossip Queen of Bethnal Green.

"The one who tried to chat you up?" I teased, swinging up onto the railing, and adjusting my cherry earring, which had gotten tangled with a strand of hair.

"Yeah, well, apparently, he just got out, served his eight month sentence, and Millie, who's got a sister in her Year, says she's pregnant." Lola laughed.

"God Lil, you'd do well to believe Millie Patterson. She's always spreading some dumb rumour. She just wants to get noticed."

Lily shook her head. "Not this time. She's two months gone, and she keeps getting out of PE, and some of the Year Eleven girls say she is starting to show." I was seriously bored of Lily's gossip by now, and as considering grabbing Emma and heading to Tesco Met, to buy a couple of bags of crisps and Coke, when a little skinny kid, who lived at the Zoo with me came sprinting up.

"Oi, girls!" he yelled. "Watch out, there's gonna be a car coming." Lily dropped all thought of Aaliyah's pregnancy when she heard this. A car coming is when some guy, joyriding, or drug dealing is getting away from the police, and when they are going to pass the park, everyone runs up to the railing to watch. Sometimes they jump out and come hide in the crowd. Then we all have to run, because the police will arrest anyone they can get their hands on, and charge them with aiding and abetting a crime.

"Come on." Lily grinned, and grabbed her bag from where she'd slung it. "I'm not missing this."

It didn't take long for the show to turn up. We heard police sirens first, loud and clear, and a couple of the druggies bottled it and ran off into the estate. The car was a silver Mercedes that came screaming round the corner, and screeched to a halt not far from the railings. It was posh, much too posh for the skinny kid who came leaping out of the driver's seat, as a flame leapt out of the seat where he had been sitting. A couple of the police officers who had been chasing jumped forward and started beating out the flames before they reached the petrol tank. Meanwhile, the driver had flung himself over the rail, diving into the middle of the crowd, narrowly avoiding the bulky police officer who swiped at him. Other police officers were jumping over the rail to try and grab the kid who had jumped into the crowd, much of whom were running away, leaping over the low wall and through the gate, back out onto the estate. Lily, who already had two police cautions, had gone, getting out before she could get another, along with Abby, who had three. I didn't nick stuff from the shops, like Abby did, so I'd never been arrested, but plenty of kids who couldn't run fast enough from here got nicked, arrested for aiding and abetting, or sheltering a violent criminal.

There were more police then usual. Strange... They didn't normally send six or seven squad cars to retrieve a joy rider. The Merc must belong to someone important, or else the skinny kid was seriously wanted.

"Em!" I yelled. She grabbed my hand, tugging me away, back towards the Zoo, when a copper stepped in the way.

"Sorry girls," The cop took hold of Emma's arm, while his partner took hold of mine. "We need to ask you some questions, I'm afraid. I am therefore arresting you on a charge of aiding and abetting a violent crime and theft of a motor vehicle at knifepoint." Oh, so this was a carjacking. Emma was crying as one of the female cops put her in the back of the squad car. I didn't cry. I never cried.


	3. Strangest Questioning Ever

We'd been sitting in the police interrogation room for three hours. Emma's mum had been unreachable, and the carers from the Zoo had told police they didn't have enough staff to leave thirty sleeping children to come and supervise one arrested child, but had given police permission to question me. So Emma was left in the waiting room until she had permission from her mother to be questioned, while I was taken to a recording room. The police officers working on the case often came through, dropping off folders and suchlike, and from them, I picked up random pieces of information. It appeared that the kid driver was actually not the carjacker. His brother had stolen the car, along with his South London gang, at knifepoint from a wealthy Canadian woman and her son and left the woman with a broken arm. It sounded brutal, but as I pointed out, I hadn't known any of this, and had no connections to the gang, as it wasn't a Bethnal Green gang.

"But," the copper said, tapping his pen on the table and shuffling through all the forms I had filled in, "You were at the park. You know about all the criminal gangs around here. You live at the Zoo."

I huffed, folded my arms and refused to speak any more, at which point he decided to try a different tactic. He was technically breaking the rules, since under interrogation everything is meant to be recorded. But the cop leaned forward and clicked the recorder off, and interlocking his hands.

"Okay Cassie, so we're getting nowhere." Ooh, understatement of the century. We were getting nowhere because this cop was such a plank.

"Duh."

"Sarge?" Another police officer had opened the door to the interrogation room and was showing in a woman and a pretty cute boy. Normally I would have been straight up there, chatting him up, but today I was too tired and was so pissed at the police I couldn't be bothered. I noticed that the woman moved awkwardly, with her arm encased in plaster. Oh so this would be the carjackee. The son kept his hand on her good arm, steering her to a chair and they sat down. The woman took one look at me, and frowned.

"This isn't the carjacker. She's a girl, and I told you..." The sarge held up a hand to halt her.

"We know this wasn't the culprit. We went after both of them, and recovered your car, but both escaped. This lass lives round here, and we think she knows who they were..."

"I don't!" I half-shouted, "I told you. I'd never seen that kid before. Ask someone who goes to Bethnal Green Sec, not High. I only know the people from High and the east side of the estate. I steer well clear of anyone from Sec, or I'll get beaten up again."

The son had raised one eyebrow at my outburst, and was nodding.

"You're wasting your time. We only want the dude who stole our car busted, not random girls." He looked at me, gazing intently. The mother and the cop were both looking at me in the same way. I stood up.

"Can I go now?"

"One more question." O. M. G. This cop was never going to give in.

"I told you, I don't kn..."

"Do you know who he is?" The cop gestured at the son, who looked up at me. He had pretty eyes. Hazel. Sweet. I thought him fit, but why would I know who he was?

"No. Why?"

"No reason. Goodbye Cassie."


	4. School's School

**BTW, sorry forgot to mention that this is slightly AU, and although JB is massive everywhere, in the story he isn't as big in the UK, therefore Cassie doesn't know who he is, but some of the girls in her class do.**

"So the wanderer returneth." Lily and Emma were waiting for me at the Station Road bus stop the next morning.

"Since when do you quote Shakespeare?" I asked, tossing my bag down onto the red plastic bench, and sat down on Emma's lap.

"What happened last night, at the police station? Lily asked.

"What, after you legged it?" I asked, searching through my pockets for my mobile which was insistently buzzing.

"Duh... I'm down for juvenile court if I get one more caution. There was no _way _I was sticking around to get another one. Not even for you babes, sorry."

"Its okay hon. That idiot cop got me in a questioning room for four hours," I said, having finally located my phone. Lily flicked some of her braids over her shoulder and smoothed on some more concealer into her skin. "What's the text? Is it from Cole?" My hand shot out and tugged lightly on one of her braids, eyes never leaving the screen.

"Course not. He has a girlfriend, and I'm no bitch." The text was from Lola, who now went to a behaviour clinic instead of school. Her tutor had confiscated her iPod, and Lola, in a fit of anger for losing her music had slapped her.

The ancient bus rumbled to a halt in front of us. Emma pushed me off her lap and we jumped on. The bus was already half full with Secondary and High students. A couple of Sec boys whistled at Lily, but all they earned was a sharp pain in their foot from Lily's contraband spiky heels as she swung past. We collapsed into one of the seats, squashed in together. I tugged on the end of my tie, loosening it a little more. I was going to get another uniform mark, but I really couldn't give a damn. Lily reached around Emma and snatched it out of my hand.

"You can't go school looking like that. Your tie looks way too geeky." She grabbed hold of the end and pulled it down even further. "Better. You look like a Sec girl now, not a geeky High."

"Thanks. It's bad enough I have to go to stupid High, without you rubbing it in."

"Aw, honey, it ain't that bad is it?"

"You have no bloody idea."

The form room was chaos. Ms Craig stood at the board screaming ineffectually. Nobody could hear her over the racket of thirty-two students having a riot. Nobody was even facing the board. I leaned back, thumbs flying over the keys of my phone, tapping out messages to Emma and Lily. They replied so quickly, my thumbs were beginning to ache. I was so concentrated on the tiny screen I didn't notice someone looming over me. Quick hands snatched my phone out of my hands, and yanked it out of my reach. It was common knowledge at BGH that if you let anything of value out of your sight for more than ten seconds then you were unlikely to see it again. My hand came up instinctively, clenched into a fist, and whacked the thief hard round the face. The thief let out a whimper, and dropped my phone. I picked it up off of the floor, dusted it off and resumed typing.

We could only just hear the bell over the sound of the riot. Ms Craig had buried her face in her hands about four minutes into registration, and she scarpered now, out of the door before us. I was second out, not even bothering to look where I was going. A Year Seven ran out in front of me, and got trampled by Jamie and his mates. Nobody cared. Nobody ever cared. It didn't occur to us to care about anyone else.

Next lesson was History, a lesson with a strict teacher. Crap, no texting, no fighting. Damn.

I stepped over a wrestling match on the floor, and neatly ducked a swinging fist from a scrawny looking kid, not intentionally aimed my way, for once. Nice.

We were about halfway through the lesson, with me trying to surreptitiously slip my phone out of my pocket from under the eye of the strict Scotswoman teacher, when our Head of Year burst in, looking faintly pleased that our lesson seemed to actually be taking place, instead of a riot, as was so often the case at the second-worst school in the area. Behind him was a boy, looking apprehensively at the class.

"10E! Shush, quieten down, now!" The female proportion of the class seemed to have shut up pretty damn quick, and the male half had stopped throwing spit balls and sandwiches and stuff around. I glanced up, continuing to text Emma and Lil, before my fingers froze.

"10E, this is Jack Bates." It was the boy from the police station. Oh joy, as usual the only empty seat was next to me so he'd end up sitting there. Fun, fun, fun.


End file.
